About

The College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest and largest of the schools that comprise the University of Portland and is home to 1,500 students, 150 full-time faculty members, and an array of degree programs of study that spans across the human, natural, and social sciences. Every undergraduate student at the University, regardless of his or her major, shares a common University Core experience. Taught by expert scholars and passionate teachers, the unique University Core Curriculum will offer you a set of lenses by which to critically engage the intersection of faith, culture, art, humanities, and the social and natural sciences. We want to help you become the kind of person you most want to be, the kind of person God calls you to be.

The College is home to 15 academic departments and offers more than 30 majors, 22 minors, and five Interdisciplinary Minors: Women’s and Gender Studies, Hellenistic Studies, Social Justice, Neuroscience, and Catholic Studies. As a graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences you will learn to analyze complex problems, implement solutions, discern the common good, and successfully integrate widely varying knowledge bases with an experienced eye towards global engagement. Many successful professionals --- including doctors, lawyers, scientists, social workers, psychologists, engineers, writers, entrepreneurs, clergy, journalists, professors, and musicians --- start off with a liberal arts degree. An education in the Arts and Sciences gives you the flexibility to pursue any career you can imagine (-- and some careers that haven’t been invented yet! --) along with a solid foundation to engage advanced study in medicine, law, politics, healthcare, education, the social sciences, business, religion, and other disciplinary professional programs. Here you will be challenged as never before to think critically, write persuasively, act ethically, and dream passionately.

In addition to classroom lectures and hands-on lab work, College of Arts and Sciences students are propelled out of the classroom and into the world where they happily discover that book learning always acquiesces to the lessons of life, that introspection naturally gravitates towards an outlook, a position, a principle confirmed by experience.

The College of Arts and Sciences affirms this experiential foundation of knowledge and wisdom, where passion for discovery and the sheer delight of learning unite to create a unique laboratory of the mind and heart, a community of scholars — professors and students — engaged in the pursuit of truth for the sake of justice in the world.